Hannah & Barbara Are Dead
by Adjacent Narrations
Summary: Hello, this is "Hannah & Barbara Are Dead". It is a short homage to Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead". Familiarity with that play (or its film adaptation) are not necessary to enjoy this oneshot, but are recommended. A more thorough foreward is contained within. Side note: to avoid spoiling a minor plot point, avoid reading the character tags.


== **Foreward** ==

Hello there. I'm Jane, and this is a fanfiction of my own creation. It stars everyone's favorite _Little Witch Academia_ bit characters, Hannah and Barbara.

Without spoiling anything, this story is intended in two ways, as an homage to Tom Stoppard's _Rosencrantz & Guildestern Are Dead_, and as a sort of metaphorical look into how these two characters (who, really, don't get a ton of screen time) might view Diana. Without some knowledge of R&G I fear this story may not entirely "connect", but you are certainly free to read it anyway (indeed I could not stop you if I wanted to), and in the end it's all good fun. Indeed, just because that is how I intend this story doesn't mean that's how you have to interpret it.

I hope you enjoy this short tale of confusion and ennui.

== **End Forward** ==

"I'm sure I can trust you two to handle this, right?" Diana's crisp Londoner English put a small, but fine, point on the words. She hadn't forgotten about the other day with the makeup and, really, neither had they. How could they?

The red-haired girl nodded her head with an amount of enthusiasm that would make your average middle-manager recoil in shame. "Of course, Diana!" she replied, her affected Brit-American knitting the words into too-neat little bows as they left her mouth, each one packaged with care far disproportionate to the inherent meaninglessness of the words. The blue-haired girl, never the one to talk as much, just nodded along. A bit less enthusiastic, that was just her way. She had always been the more muted of the two, or at least, she thought so.

Diana, the Moonlit Witch-to-be they were both sure, gave them one of her looks. One of the ones that was hard to read (and really, that was most of them). The red-haired girl thought it was a look of subdued approval, the sort of "I approve that you're at least trying" that a teacher gives to a student who is trying quite hard but not doing very well. Not unlike that Kagari girl, actually. The comparison might've burned the red-haired girl up if anyone else was making it, but well, it was Diana. Everyone was Akko to her.

The blue-haired girl tried not to swallow in nervousness. Maybe it was just her but she always felt a little bit like Diana's eyes were drilling into her. No, that was the wrong word. Drilling wasn't a terribly elegant thing and what Diana's gaze did was definitely that, more a pierce from a rapier maybe. In that moment, the blue-haired girl was sure, Diana could see into souls. Straight through you. The blue-haired girl shifted on her feet, slightly uncomfortable.

"Good."

With that single word, Diana left. Leaving the pair to their own devices.

The blue-haired girl blinked. It was a forceful, deliberate blink. The type wherein one is confused, and hopes that somehow, by blinking very very hard, as one does in the early morning upon rising from bed, that their confusion will suddenly lift like the dawn fog from a mountainside.

"Barbara?" she asked the red-haired girl. "What did Diana want us to do?"

The red-haired girl blinked as well, returning a blink of much the same type and nature as the blue-haired girl's own. Her response, naturally, had nothing to do with the question.

"Barbara? _You're_ Barbara." More blinks were exchanged, here in more of a flurry than the slow forceful blinks of a few moments prior, a battle of the blinks, fluttering eyelashes being exchanged in rapid succession.

"No I'm not." The red-haired girl protested, forcefully jabbing her thumb into her chest. A moment passed in an awkward silence, and her gesture began to falter. "Am I?"

"What's the last thing Miss Diana called you?" The blue-haired girl ventured.

"Well…"The red-haired girl tapped a finger to her chin. Perhaps hoping it would somehow stimulate her brain, but, try as she might, she could think of no occasion in recent memory-perhaps ever? Where Diana had referred to either herself or her companion...friend? Girlfriend? Sister? Seperately. "I don't know." She conceded.

There was a long, long moment between the two of them. This time there was no blinking, just the red-haired girl's eyes locking with the blue haired girl's, an invisible bridge of non-comprehension building between them second by second.

This time, the blue-haired girl did indeed gulp, nervous. Her voice shaking slightly, she spoke.

"Barbara..uh...Hannah...who are we?"

Decisive and bold action was always in the red-haired girl's nature, or at least, she thought it was. She clapped a hand to the blue-haired girl's shoulder.

"Well. We'll say that I'm Hannah, and you're Barbara, OK?"

"O..okay." At this point it was obvious to both that the blue-haired girl was holding back tears. How could one not be? Confusion, in some ways, is the least pleasant human emotion.

"We'll go find Diana, right? She'll tell us everything we need to know! Which one's which, and what we need to do for the festival!"

"The festival?"

"The Samhain!"

"The Samhain?"

"The Samhain!" the red-haired girl repeated, this time more loudly. "You know, where Diana will become the Moonlit Witch!"

"Ahhhh!" The word-more just a sound really-floated out of the blue-haired girl's mouth like a cloud. "The Samhain!"

"Yes, the Samhain." The red-haired girl nodded authoritatively. The Samhain, that they could agree about. Really, Diana had to know. If she didn't, who possibly could? Certainly not any of the other witches, like Akko, or Lotte, or Sucy, or, well, now that the red-haired girl thought about it. She couldn't really think of many other witches at the school. There was that green coven, to be sure, and Avery, who was, she thought, _probably_ their friend, or at least an acquaintance.

Surely there were more, right?

"Hannah, are we going?" The blue-haired girl had already made her way to their room's exit. Wordlessly, the red-haired girl followed.

Empty.

The hall was completely empty. Not a single witch, teacher, cleaning goblin, sign of life of any kind. Unquestionably, the hall was vacant. Profoundly so, almost, the way a parking lot at 2am is vacant. It projected a sort of unreality, an assertion that not only are there no people here, there could never have been any. The pair were unnerved as they walked.

"Why isn't anyone here?" The blue-haired girl asked. "Isn't...the festival tonight?"

"No, it's not for a few weeks." The red-haired girl raised her pointer finger with authority as the made the statement, only to slowly let it drop back down. "I think."

"Why don't we know that?" Again, the blue-haired girl was approaching hysteria. "Shouldn't we know that? We've been helping Diana prepare! We've been doing that for weeks! Shouldn't we know? Shouldn't there be more people here? Isn't this weird? Isn't this really weird?!" The panic tumbled out of her mouth like a rockslide, but before the red-haired girl could say anything to calm her fears, they did meet someone.

Not, perhaps, who they were expecting or hoping for, but someone.

"Oh. It's you two." The lavender-haired witch before them did not speak so much as she snarked. Her heavy-lidded eye blinked, a different sort of blink than the one the two girls had been exchanging before. This was a calm blink, one of blase'-ness, of uncaring.

"Sushi?" Barbara ventured.

" _Sucy_." She sharply and quickly corrected the pronunciation. "You didn't have trouble saying it earlier. 'Creepy Sucy', right?"

"Ah, well…" Now the red-haired girl tensed up.

"Hmm?" The lavender-haired witch's expression twisted into a small smile, a smirk, really. "Maybe I shouldn't hold it against you. You're not quite yourselves right now, right?"

"Huh?"

"Huh?"

The girls expressed their confusion in-synch, the lavender-haired witch responded with a small laugh.

"You should go galloping along. You don't want to be late, right?" Without further word, the lavender-haired witch passed them, and began walking in the opposite direction.

"Wait!" The blue-hair girl called out. "Late for what?!"

"How would you know?" The lavender-haired witch replied. "You haven't gotten there yet."

Over seconds that felt like minutes that felt like hours, people began pouring back into the hall. Witches of many different covens, shapes, and sizes.

Yet still, the girls felt as though they had learned nothing, and were still both very confused, until she walked into the scene.

"There you two are." Diana's words were curt, she was carrying a trio of black robes. She handed one to Hannah and one to Barbara. "I've been looking all over for you."

The two blinked again, this time together, and this time with a sudden clarity. Here was their anchor, their rock, and she knew everything.

"Keep these with you." Diana continued. "The festival is in a few hours and we might not have much time to prepare."

"Of course, Diana." The red-haired girl said.

"Okay, Diana!" The blue-haired girl said.

Diana smiled a small smile. What _would_ they do without her?


End file.
